Worries that US President Donald Trump’s recently announced tariffs would raise the cost of sourcing and selling art, antiques and other collectibles are abating, as these objects have been largely declared exempt from new import duties, according to a statement from the United States Trade Representative’s office on 23 July.
A statement released by the Confédération Internationale des Négociants en Œuvres d’Art (Cinoa), the international trade association of art and antiques dealers, welcomed the exemptions in the new tariffs. The “decision to exempt works of art, antiques and collectors’ items likely reflects the comments submitted during the consultation by organisations including Cinoa, the British Antique Dealers Association, the International Association of Professional Numismatists and other supporting trade bodies to ensure that the unique nature of the art market was fully understood”, the statement reads in part
Peter Tompa, a Washington, DC-based lawyer and the executive director of the International Association of Professional Numismatists (collectors and dealers specialised in money and medals), called the decision by the US Trade Representative to exempt coins and other antiques and collectibles from the latest round of tariffs “great news. Sometimes, government listens.”
Trump’s decision to impose new tariffs of 10% or 12.5% on around imports from 80 countries will likely be reviewed by the US Supreme Court, the same body that last February struck down a previous tariff regime the Trump administration had imposed under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The high court ruled by a six-to-three majority that the administration’s actions were unconstitutional, since the power of taxation and to unilaterally set and change tariffs belongs to Congress and not the president.
The new tariff plan is based on an earlier law, the Trade Act of 1974, which permits the president to impose import taxes and other sanctions against countries found to engage in “unjustifiable”, “unreasonable” or “discriminatory” trade practices. Section 301 of that statute permits the imposition of tariffs against countries that use forced labour or have overproduced goods, pushing down prices and putting US companies at a disadvantage in global markets. The US Trade Representative’s office has launched a probe into whether 16 countries (Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam and the European Union), which altogether account for 70% of US imports, to determine if they engage in unfair trading practices.
In a statement, Jamieson Greer, the United States Trade Representative, said that “Trump is tackling modern-day slavery at its source by requiring our trading partners to enact and enforce import bans to ensure products made by workers under such horrifying conditions are no longer traded in global commerce”.
The other 64 countries subject to the new tariffs were identified as inadequately enforcing bans on goods produced by forced labour. Forced labour is defined by the International Labour Organisation’s Forced Labor Convention of 1930 as “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself (or herself) voluntarily”.
In addition to the new tariffs of 10% or 12.5% on goods from 80 US trade partners, on 20 July Trump announced sweeping tariffs of 50% on imports from Canada in response to the country’s allegedly “discriminatory treatment of American products”. Those tariffs do apply to contemporary and historical art, antiques and antiquities, stamps, coins and most other types of collectibles. (Last year Trump imposed 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, causing some Canadian dealers to change their plans to show at US fairs, or to show American artists’ work in Canada.)
The confusion over whether art, antiques and other collectibles would or would not be subject to the US president’s various import duties, based on emergency statutes that Trump was using as the basis of his tariff regime starting in early 2025, has roiled the trade of these objects.
“The former tariffs made life difficult for importers and the shipping trade, which is integral to our business,” says Clinton Howell, an English antiques dealer in San Francisco. “I do not buy in Europe. I buy all my English antique furniture within the US as there is plenty of it.”
On the other hand, Millicent Creech, an antiques dealer in Memphis, Tennessee, says that worries about potential tariffs on imported antiques led her to close her gallery in May. “I am working online from both home and a secure small office and storage building. I could not keep the space filled from the US alone,” she says.
Patrick Bavasi, a New York City-based dealer of English and continental furniture from the 18th and 19th centuries, says the Trump administration’s tariff regime has forced him to increase the prices he charges to buyers, as well as to take a pass “on attending some of the major European fairs this year”. He adds that he has “focused more on sourcing material here in the US. One interesting consequence is that, with fewer European dealers traveling here to buy, competition for high-quality pieces here has eased somewhat.”
